Eeyore and Pixie
by Rakina Snape
Summary: Harry and Severus have fun in their new garden!


Title: Eeyore and Pixie

Author: Rakina

Summary: Harry and Severus have fun in their new garden!

Genre – Humour. Complete, 4,430 words. I wrote this to commemorate the birthday of my friends eeyore9990 and macropixi.

Pairings: Teh Snarry … Severus Snape/Harry Potter.

Warnings: Too much silliness – hold on to your ribs.

Beta: helbee, whom I love in a purely platonic manner, honest guv.

Feedback: Oh go on… you know you want to (and I _really _want you to!).

Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter, its characters and settings are the copyrighted works of J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros., her publishing companies and affiliates. Eeyore belongs to A.A. Milne (or at least he used to). No profit was made from the writing of this story.

**Eeyore and Pixie**

**By Rakina**

Severus Snape had earned, quite deservedly, a reputation for being stubborn, difficult, and generally bloody awkward. So why should his relationship with Harry Potter be any different?

Harry had accepted the inevitability of Severus' nature being as fixed and unchanging as the fact that the sun would rise in the morning. And he could cope now, because he was used to it. Well, he kept telling himself that; one day he might believe it.

Severus had been tentative about moving in with Harry. First he said he wanted to, then he didn't. He'd plan to join Harry at Godric's Hollow, then he'd back off and say he had 'affairs' to deal with at Spinner's End. It was quite ridiculous, in Harry's opinion. Now the war was over, Voldemort was no more threatening than that smear of squashed bug innards on the kitchen windowsill – and Harry gestured at it with a wordless, wandless _Scourgify _until it was nothing more than a memory – and the Wizarding world knew about their two-year relationship. Yes, it had caused a mighty uproar for a while, but even such momentous, shocking news could not command the front page of the _Prophet_ forever.

No, there was really no reason for Severus to stay in that small, gloomy house. He admitted he didn't like it, that he'd only kept it for convenience. Harry somehow doubted it was that simple. If it was just that, Severus would have moved in to the Hollow permanently a while ago. Severus was brooding, either on his childhood, or his mother, or his past, or more likely all of them.

It wasn't healthy, and Harry persisted in pointing out the advantages of just keeping the one home – the entirely delightful, rebuilt cottage at Godric's Hollow. And eventually, because underneath all the other layers Severus Snape was a practical man, Severus had agreed and sold his house, moving all his possessions into what was now 'their' cottage. Harry had been a little overcome by the quantity of books and potions equipment Severus owned, but they'd fitted up the downstairs back room as a potions lab, and Severus had taken over a whole bedroom for his books. There was a single bed squeezed in there too, under the window, which Severus used when he got into a huff from time to time and refused to come to bed with Harry. The separation never lasted more than a night and was always followed by rather interesting, if exhausting, make-up sex. Harry sometimes wondered if that's why Severus did it.

Now they were settled in and summer was here, and they had a new project. Severus had always wanted his own herb garden – or, more accurately, a potions-ingredient garden. Now he had the kind of place where he could do it he was keen to get started. Harry was happy to help. He wasn't a genius at Herbology like Neville, but he was okay, and he enjoyed growing and tending magical plants as well as Muggle ones. The gardening was surprisingly soothing – most of the time.

It was Saturday morning, bright and dry with a nice breeze which would stop it getting too hot, so Severus had suggested they spend the day working in the garden. Harry had happily agreed.

"We can get started on the rose bed. There are some overgrown roses there I'd like to keep which need clearing of weeds," Severus said.

"That would be great. I think Mum must have tended them," Harry agreed happily. "But there's a right tangle of stuff in between the roses."

"Yes. We'll start there," Severus said as he donned his light dragon-hide gloves which he kept for gardening.

Sev's gloves were made from the skin of dragon embryos, which Harry found faintly disturbing, imagining eggs being opened and tiny dragons being flayed for the benefit of the magical glove industry. He could only imagine what Hagrid would say. Harry wiggled his fingers into his own Muggle-style gardening gloves, which he admitted were nowhere near as good. Determined thorns (nearly all the plants Severus approved of seemed to have those) could, and regularly did, get through the Muggle 'thornproof' material.

The men walked across to the tangled 'rose bed'. Harry couldn't help it, he had to say it: "It's not exactly a bed of roses, is it?"

Severus snorted. Harry's attempt at wit was so feeble he wouldn't grace it with a reply.

They started by choosing a rose bush each and pulling out a lot of the entangling undergrowth from beneath it. _Convolvulus _– Bindweed – was the most annoying stuff. Although it wasn't thorny it twined up the stems of the roses, which had plenty of thorns for both plants, and when they pulled off the climbing stems they snapped. To remove one Bindweed plant took a considerable time, and Harry soon learned to hate the stuff, even though it wasn't directly pricking him it was causing the rose stems to bend and thwack him each time he tugged at the Bindweed, and a large percentage were piercing the Muggle gloves he insisted on wearing.

Eventually Severus straightened up and looked at the rose bush he had managed to expose. It had lovely, glossy leaves; plenty of leaves indeed, but no flowers. "Nostradamus's knackers!" he yelled, suddenly spraying spit over the bush in his outrage. "Bleeding pixies… I'll blast the little beasts into a million pieces!"

"What's up?" Harry asked, gratefully straightening his back and coming to peer at the bush which had offended his lover.

"The pestilential pixies have eaten all the flower heads – just look!"

Harry had been looking. He couldn't see any flower heads and told Severus so. Which was a mistake, really.

"Of course there aren't any flower heads; are you being deliberately stupid? I said they'd eaten them all – hence the absence of flowers. There are no flowers – is that clear enough? What flowers there were, and by the truncated tops I'd say there were plenty, are now mere memories in the digestive tracts of an infestation, no, a veritable plague, of Cornish pixies!"

"Umm… how do you know it's pixies. It could be gnomes," Harry ventured shakily. He knew he was stepping onto the thinnest ice here, but he stepped onto it, Gryffindor-fashion, anyway.

"Gnomes? _Gnomes!_ Did you attend Hogwarts? Did you spend time with Professors Sprout and Hagrid? I often wonder, given your complete inanity in both horticultural and zoological matters, or indeed in most things that don't involve broomsticks and bed. Even _Longbottom _would know that gnomes stay at ground level; any damage they make – and they can make plenty, believe you me – never reaches the tops of rosebushes. No. These are pixies. And we aren't a million miles from Cornwall, so you could say they've made themselves very much at home in the Hollow."

"Oh."

"Yes, _oh."_

"So what do we do now?"

Severus huffed a bit; he seemed to be calming down. "Well, as it's the two of us, and neither of us are weak wizards, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. We can cast a powerful Banishment Charm on all pixie species, which would take out a lot of their relatives, like doxies, as well. It's annoying, but we can overcome the problem."

Harry wondered why, if it was that easy, Severus had got quite so annoyed. Then he snorted softly himself as he realised that he couldn't expect anything else. This was Severus after all, and Severus was a moody git.

The two wizards went to the centre of the garden. They stood back-to-back and chanted the words of the Banishment Charm. Severus had instructed Harry how to customise it to affect the pests and nothing else, before making sure Harry knew the words and actions off by heart. Now they slowly rotated on the spot as they said the spell, making a 360 degree sweep and including all the ground within about a mile of where they were standing. There was a satisfying whooshing-and-squeaking sound as the pixies, doxies and flower-fairies all flew through the air at great speed. They would have to find a new home in some other poor wizard's garden, providing they survived the forceful ejection from this one.

Harry relaxed his arms as they ended the spell. "I could do with a beer after that. Want one?"

Severus curled his lip. "As long as this beer has nothing – absolutely nothing, you hear? – to do with the word 'butter', I suppose so."

Harry returned with two chilled beers from the magically-cooled area in the kitchen.

"Thank you," Severus acknowledged, and Harry smiled. Sev was getting out of his mood. Good. Of course, the stream of helpless, flying and protesting pests would have helped with that.

They sat on an old bench under the shade of a rowan tree. The tree was beautiful in all seasons, bearing delightful blossom and berries, and had many magical uses. It provided very welcome shade, too. Harry felt a warmth inside which had nothing to do with the sunshine they'd been working in, or the beer. Sev was settling here at Godric's Hollow, taking to the tasks that needed doing with great enthusiasm. When Harry had reminded him of his reluctance to give up Spinner's End and make a permanent home here, Severus had looked disbelievingly at Harry and claimed he didn't know what Harry was talking about. Harry smiled; he just loved the impossible git.

If it was any other season but high summer, Harry would have leaned against Severus and revelled in the closeness, but he held himself apart, knowing Severus hated being overheated. Sev had spent so many years living in Hogwarts' dungeons that he didn't cope well with heat. It didn't matter; they were as close as two people could get without actually touching, and it was a wonderful, peaceful closeness that Harry knew he'd been missing all his life. He intended not to take a day of it for granted.

About ten minutes later, beer savoured and bodies cooled, they wordlessly agreed to start again. By lunchtime they'd cleared all the encroaching plants from around the rosebushes. There were ten bushes in the bed, but not one had a single flower, nor even a bud.

"Do you think they'll flower again?" Harry asked.

"There's a good chance they will now the pixies are gone. Those creatures ate every bud as it formed."

"I wonder what colour they'll be…"

"I would expect some to be dark red. The dark, glossy leaves are indicative, but it's not 100 percent certain. You will just have to practice your weakest skill: patience."

Harry rolled his eyes, but didn't bother commenting. Instead he said, "Lunch? I'm starving, I don't know about you."

"Acceptable," Severus said, as if he was doing Harry a favour. Harry knew better: that was Severus-language for 'so am I, but I'm not going to admit to such a human weakness in front of you.'

They went indoors, glad to be out of the sun for a while, and had a leisurely lunch of cold chicken salad and bread and butter. They ate strawberries which had been grown in their little greenhouse, safe from the attention of the pixies.

Afterwards, Severus went and sat in 'his' chair in the lounge and stretched his long legs out in front of him with a sigh of contentment. Harry felt warm, full and not in any hurry to resume work. He settled into a soft armchair and a few minutes later, his eyes drifted closed. He was only going to relax for a minute or two, until Severus called him back to work…

"HAW… HAWWW…. HAWWWWWWWWWWW."

Harry's eyes shot open.

"Dumbledore's drawers! What the fuck is that?" Severus yelled, jumping out of his chair with an alacrity he rarely showed in these peaceful times.

"I've no idea," Harry mumbled, getting up to follow Severus who was heading through the kitchen towards the back door. It was just typical – he'd been having a lovely, erotic dream about Sev covered in crushed strawberries, and the terrible task he'd been having licking them off, when the cacophonous noise had woken him. He'd never heard anything like it, even in Hagrid's enclosures.

"HAWWWWWWWWWWW!"

The noise was strangely echoing, booming almost. Harry was as keen as Severus to find its source. They rushed out into the garden, following the sound. The greenhouse!

Harry and Severus came to a halt. They were both, for once, completely speechless.

"HAWWWWWWWWWWW … Haw, heehaw?" The final sound had an interrogative character as its creator saw the two wizards standing outside the greenhouse, staring in.

Harry couldn't help it. He knew it would annoy Sev, but he couldn't stop the rush of mirth. He let out a snort of laughter almost as loud as the previous noises, and doubled up clutching his ribs, trying to stop the laughing fit.

He could feel Severus' eyes on him; he didn't need to look up. He knew Sev would be frowning, glaring… hell, he'd probably be making his eyes look like they were sticking out on stalks, a trick he'd mastered at Hogwarts when faced with a particularly inept attempt at a potion. The mental image of just how Sev must be looking right about now wasn't helping Harry to calm down at all. He howled with laughter and only just prevented himself from falling to the ground and rolling around, like Ron had done so often.

"I might have known!" Severus growled. "You're responsible for this… this _thing, _aren't you?"

This surprised Harry enough that he stopped laughing and looked up. "What?"

"You must have put it in there when you picked the strawberries this morning."

"Sev, you're being silly. Why would I do that?"

"It seems to amuse you; therefore I imagine this is a typically puerile attempt at being humorous. Well, I _don't_ find it funny!" Severus huffed.

Harry managed to prevent himself from laughing at Severus. He'd been laughing at the situation before, but he knew from past experience how ill-advised it was to laugh at Severus Snape.

"What is it, anyway?" Severus asked, peering at the trapped beast once more.

"You mean to say you don't know?" Harry was incredulous. Surely Severus had seen a donkey before.

"If I knew, I'd hardly ask, would I? Is it a mule?"

"No, it's a donkey. You know, an ass. A beast of burden. A long-eared claxon."

Severus cast a suspicious glance at the grinning Harry, who was enjoying himself far too much in his opinion. "A donkey," he said in sepulchral tones.

"Yes. And they're very fond of strawberries. Haven't you heard the phrase 'it's like feeding a donkey strawberries'?"

"No, I'm thankful to say I have not. My experience of such beasts has been, mercifully until today, nil."

"Well, it was only making that noise because it's finished the strawberries and now it can't get out. The door must have shut behind it somehow."

"The door should not have been open in the first place," Severus pointed out, as helpful as usual.

"Well, let's let it out. It'll probably go home then."

"I seriously doubt it is domesticated," Severus said, eyeing the now-peaceful donkey. "It looks quite wild."

"They're not dangerous," Harry assured him.

"I don't care if they are," Severus said, drawing himself up into a more formidable stance. "If it tries anything with me, I will blast it into the next county."

"I'll deal with it, Sev. Don't do anything, all right?" Harry approached the greenhouse door, hoping Severus wouldn't panic and hex the donkey when it got free. It would probably trot off into the woods nearby. The donkey, seeing its release approaching, kicked the greenhouse door with a front hoof. _Boom!_

Severus had whipped his wand out and pointed it before Harry could take another step. Harry turned and placed himself in the path of the wand. "Sev, it just wants to come out. It isn't dangerous."

"I know that," Severus mumbled, looking a bit shamefaced at his reaction. "Just make sure it leaves."

Harry hurried to the door and pulled it open before the donkey had chance to kick – or worse from his lover's point of view, bray – again. The donkey put its ears back and peered at Harry, then stepped forward until he was outside the little greenhouse, previous repository of strawberries, but unwitting equine prison.

The donkey stopped, standing next to Harry and beginning to lean on him a little. Harry scratched its long ears, admiring the beast. The donkey was a nice grey colour, with the distinctive cross over its withers and along its spine. Its dark, liquid eyes stared into Harry's and it gave a gentle, pleased-sounding snort. "There's a good Eeyore," Harry said, and patted its flanks.

"Yes, well, perhaps you could encourage _Eeyore_ to go on his way." Severus' voice still held an edge of anxiety, and Harry forced himself not to smile. Donkeys were lovely animals, reputed to be anything but vicious, yet Severus was treating it as if it was the result of one of Hagrid's experimental breeding programmes.

At the sound of Severus' voice, the donkey swivelled its eyes towards him. Eeyore gave another, slightly less happy-sounding, snort.

"Go on," Harry said, slapping the donkey's buttocks. Well, slapping whatever a donkey's buttocks were called.

Eeyore flicked his tail, but didn't move.

"Go home, Eeyore!" Harry shouted, slapping the buttocks a bit harder this time.

The-donkey-now-known-as-Eeyore let out a brief 'HAW!' and kicked his back leg out a bit, but never moved a step.

"You don't seem to have the knack with donkeys, after all," Severus said, now sounding an odd mixture of anxious, amused and scathing.

"Well, I didn't say I knew how to handle them. I just know they aren't dangerous," Harry defended himself.

"Well, he can't stay here," Severus stated the obvious. "If you cannot move him, I will hex him, at least enough to dissuade him from using our garden as a paddock. He's already polished off the strawberries, after a day or two we would have no garden left."

"You can't do that, Severus. He belongs to somebody. Look, he's got a collar and nametag."

The donkey was sporting a very smart, red, head collar with a silver disc hanging from it. Harry turned the disc around to read it. _'To Harry & Severus, good luck in your new home, from Hagrid'_. "Oh," Harry said out loud.

"What do you mean, 'oh'?" Severus asked, sounding a little panicky now. "You use that syllable to cover a multitude of occasions – I never know what you mean by it. Explain yourself! What does the nametag say?"

"Oh, well, Severus, you're not going to like it," Harry hedged.

"I rarely like anything that involves some hair-brained scheme with you at its centre," Severus groused. "Just tell me what the dratted tag says!"

"I'm not at the centre of it!" Harry wanted that to be clear, before he explained anything about the possible permanent place in their life of a donkey, that he had nothing to do with it. Severus wasn't going to like this, but Harry didn't see why he should be blamed.

Severus' face was beginning to turn red, and that was never a good look for him. And Harry was pretty sure it wasn't sunburn, so he blurted out the information from the tag to forestall another outburst and rise in his lover's blood pressure. "It says _'To Harry & Severus, good luck in your new home, from Hagrid'_." He stopped himself adding 'wasn't that nice of him?'.

And of course, the quick answer didn't forestall an outburst at all. "WHAT? Tell me this is your warped, Gryffindorish sense of humour, please. It doesn't say any such thing, does it? Tell me the truth, Harry." Severus ended on a frankly plaintive note after the outrage.

"That's what it says, come and see for yourself," Harry invited, holding the disc up so Severus could see. Well, he could if he'd come a bit nearer.

"I am not getting anywhere near that flea-ridden, long-eared, excuse for an alarm clock. I have infinitely more braincells than that." Severus walked alongside Eeyore, still at a distance, examining the true horror of the-thing-that-was-now-their-donkey.

"Well, we could make a fenced-off area for him easily enough," Harry mused.

"We are not keeping him."

"Hagrid would be terribly upset-"

"Hagrid blubs like a baby if I do as much as swat a billywig in his sight," Severus interrupted. "He doesn't seem to realise that not everybody shares his all-encompassing love for all things bestial. This… this… ambulatory rug is not my idea of an appropriate house-warming gift."

"He's not so bad. He would keep the lawn short," Harry was beginning to enjoy the donkey's peaceful stance – Eeyore was still leaning on Harry. Eeyore's eyes were beautiful, if slightly mournful. In fact, apart from when he let out his strange brays, Harry decided he was quite delightful.

Severus glanced at Harry and saw the soppy look in the green eyes as the young man petted the creature which had attached itself to him. "The pestilential thing isn't stupid, I'll give it that. It soon saw you were the weak link here," he muttered.

"Please, Severus," Harry said, looking at Severus with his patented 'little-boy-lost-never-had-any-presents' look.

Severus sighed. He could argue and bluster till the cows came home – or in this case, the donkey – but he knew once he saw that look, that he was lost. Ultimately he'd give in, so it made sense to do so quickly while they could still sort something out in their garden, before Eeyore trimmed the rest of it until it resembled a wilderness. Severus certainly wasn't going to make a habit of giving in gracefully, though.

"Very well, I suppose it might have its uses, though I still doubt it. However, if it starts that abysmal noise at inappropriate hours, I'll send it to the glue factory!"

"Thank you, Severus," Harry said, grinning his soppy grin and patting Eeyore's rump. "See, Eeyore, you'll be fine. Uncle Severus will soon get used to you."

Severus wanted to go over and throttle the brat – _Uncle Severus _indeed! Instead, he stomped off to create a donkey paddock. There was that unused land over by the woodland edge. The soil wasn't great there; it was just scrubby grassland with too many patches of thistles and lots of tree-roots intruding from the woodland. He concentrated on making a fence around it and found himself inadvertently calming down as he worked the magic.

Harry conjured a rope out of a piece of garden twine and attached it to Eeyore's head collar. He then stood and watched Severus creating the paddock and a water-trough, all the while absentmindedly patting and scratching the donkey which was still leaning against him as if it had found its long-lost soulmate.

"Bring the beast over here," Severus called out once he'd finished.

Harry walked forward, rope in hand, and Eeyore followed like a well-trained, docile beast of burden. Severus wasn't fooled for a minute. Harry led Eeyore into the paddock and unclipped the rope. "Off you go," he said and slapped the beast's rump.

Severus couldn't help thinking that Harry must be getting very familiar with that part of the beast's anatomy by now.

Eeyore swivelled his dark, sad eyes at Harry and leaned against him again. Harry laughed. "I haven't got all day to stand here with you; go on now."

Harry walked over to the gate and Eeyore followed him. The donkey would have walked straight out of the paddock after Harry, but Severus shut the gate on him and Eeyore found himself separated from his new best friend.

"Right, that's done. Thank you, Hagrid, for making us more work," Severus grumped. "Let's get back to the gardening."

As they walked off, Eeyore started to bray. "Haw, hee-haw… HAW!"

"Ignore the beast," Severus commanded, as Harry looked back. "You cannot spend your life as a babysitter to a donkey."

"I know," Harry said, "but he seemed so happy to be with me, and he's probably lonely. Perhaps we should get him a companion."

"Absolutely not!" Severus said.

**Three days later:**

"Oh, Mr Murgatroyd, that's a lovely donkey!" Harry exclaimed as the Muggle farmer delivered the white donkey they'd ordered.

"It's a jenny, young Harry," Murgatroyd told him. "That's what we call female donkeys."

"Oh, then I'll call her that," Harry said, accepting the lead rope and leading the donkey towards Eeyore's paddock.

"Call it Pixie," Severus said. "In memory of the pests we did manage to get rid of that day."

Harry laughed. "If you like, Severus. But she is a beautiful pest, isn't she? And I'm sure she'll make Eeyore very happy."

"I bloody well hope so," Severus muttered. The wretched moke had been impossible on his own, braying fit to wake the dear departed. Mind you, the pixies hadn't tried to get back into their garden, so perhaps Eeyore had been slightly useful.

As they reached the paddock, Eeyore was standing with his head drooping – for effect in Severus' opinion. The wretched beast tried to monopolise Harry's company, and Severus wasn't going to put up with that, even if it meant getting another of the awful equines to distract it. Hence the phone call to Mr Murgatroyd and the arrival of Jenny – no, _Pixie._

"Here you are, Eeyore," Harry called.

Eeyore picked his head up and swivelled sad eyes at Harry, reproaching his young master for leaving him alone. His eyes fixed on Pixie… his head raised higher, his ears pricked up, and he let out a little nicker. Finally, he trotted over to the gate. Harry opened it and took Pixie in, slipping the lead rope and letting the jenny go.

Eeyore decided to let his owners know just what he thought of this. He let out a long sequence of brays similar to the first time they'd heard his rather interesting voice. "HAW… HAWWW…. HAWWWWWWWWWWW!!!'

"Well, he looks happy enough now," Harry said with satisfaction as Pixie trotted around examining her new paddock, Eeyore following like a shadow.

"I should bloody well hope so," Severus said. "That jenny cost £800. I could have bought my new platinum cauldron with that."

"Oh, shut up," Harry said amiably. To his surprise, Severus did. And from that day onward, so did Eeyore. His occasional brays were short and sweet, and it soon became obvious he was in love. It also became obvious that he wasn't a gelding, but that is another story.

FIN.


End file.
